SimEarth: The Living Planet

Sim City is generally regarded as one of the best products ever released on a 16-bit machine. On paper the game might sound deathly dull. I mean, the chance to build your own city from scratch, complete with roads, power cables and nuclear reactors doesn't sound very interesting, doesn't it?! Maybe it would appeal to sad anorak cases, but who else? In practice, though, the game was a revelation and became an instant classic.

While it's never too early to teach kids to respect the biosphere, the same may not be true of introducing them to complicated simulations such as Simearth: The Living Planet (FCI, for Super NES), which has more variables (temperature, precipitation, etc.) than a polynomial equation.

Ach, wären doch nur alle Umsetzungen so eine Freude! Auch auf dem MS-DOS-PC ist Sim Earth eine Offenbarung. Die Grafik (es wird nur EGA genutzt) wurde leicht reformiert und den PC-Bedürfnissen angepaßt.

Es ist zum Heulen: Auf meinem Planeten wütet die Pest! Ganze Landstriche werden entvölkert, Zivilisationen brechen zusammen und verwaiste Städte werden von der Natur zurückerobert. Wie konnte es nur dazu kommen? Mangelnde Hygiene der Einwohner? Zu wenig medizinischer Fortschritt? Nein, die Pestilenz ist hausgemacht; ein falscher Mausklick auf dem Katastrophenmenü und meine Leute winden sich in Agonie. Was wie ein Schreckensszenario aus dem Forschungslabor der Biotechniker klingt, ist nur eine der unendlich vielen Möglichkeiten von "Sim Earth", der neuen Weltsimulation von Maxissoft.

The most ambitious of the bunch is SimEarth, in which you really do act as the Almighty. The game lets you create a planet, pour oceans, alter climates, and nurture life forms (there's even a 2001-style Monolith button to jump- start the evolutionary process). To keep the hubris from getting too far out of hand, SimEarth's creators have given the program benign New Age trimmings (a Gaia face hovers in the corner of the screen, smiling or frowning to let you know how your planet is feeling). Happily, there are still plenty of outlets for a wrathful God (I particularly enjoyed the Plague button, which wipes out cities while emitting moaning sound effects).

Dank der Konvertierer von Maxis läuft die Evolution am Amiga rückwärts: Während die Ameisen aus "Sim Ant" praktisch zeitgleich mit ihren PC-Kollegen loskrabbelten, darf unsereins die Erde erst hinterher bewohnbar machen! Da hat also der Vorgänger den Nachfolger glatt um anderthalb Jahre überholt. Aber was sind schon 18 Monate im Vergleich mit Zehn Milliarden Jahren? So lang ist hier nämlich die maximale Spielzeit – nicht zu verwechseln mit der tatsächlich investieren Echtzeit, die aber ebenfalls reichlich bemessen werden sollte. Denn Sim Earth ist so ziemlich das genaue Gegenteil eines flotten Spielchens für Zwischendurch!

Since this simulator deals with such a huge diversity, it’s also a bit more crude than, say, SimCity. That is, for instance, once intelligent life is evolved one can put complete cities at the world. There are no clear goals; just the challenge of evolving intelligent life. Although there is a game-mode, that’s not what this game – excuse me… this program is about. Sim Earth is a simulation for hardcore sim players. It’s a program with a steep learning curve and a somewhat dry gameplay. But in my opinion, this could not really be prevented without keeping the complexity. If you have some or more interest in science, or just want to play around, and see what happens if the planet would for instance be much warmer, this is a program for you.

After a long, long wait, Sim Earth has finally arrived for the Amiga. Touted as the next best thing to being a divine intelligence, Sim Earth has something of a reputation – but so do most Maxis programs. This reputation isn't necessarily always good, though. Often the 'Maxis problem' is that of slowly updating screens, mice which don't react for what feels like days, and a slightly detached, mildly irrational feeling that you're not really involved with what seems to be going on. Sound familiar? It was certainly the case with Sim Ant (especially in high-res mode) and even Sim City had a few, shall we say, user interface idiosyncrasies.

The thing you've got to understand about Sim Earth: The Living Planet is that - no matter how ambitious, original or worthy the game may be - it simply isn't any fun at all to play. It's clunky, it's slow, it looks rubbish, it fails to explain itself properly in use, but - most of all - it fails to properly give yo anything to do. Overall verdict, - Poor presentation is the least of the sins of this overambitious and fatally flawed eco-sim. It's simply tedious in the extreme to play, and should be avoided at all costs.